


The Front

by sternflammenden



Category: A Song of Ice and Fire - George R. R. Martin
Genre: Ficlet, Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2011-11-19
Updated: 2011-11-19
Packaged: 2017-10-26 06:32:29
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings, No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 350
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/279846
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/sternflammenden/pseuds/sternflammenden
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Originally written for the <a href="http://sister-wife.livejournal.com/7323.html">Poetry Prompts Fest 2011</a>.</p><p>Prompt was:  Lysa Tully, <i>i tried / i told you i was brave but i lied</i>.  Lysa and Sweetrobin return to the Eyrie after her husband's death</p>
            </blockquote>





	The Front

When her husband dies, she goes inside of herself at last. After a lifetime of spoiled hopes, there is nothing left to do but retreat to where she has always felt safest, where she is removed from the ugliness of court life, the coldness of her marriage bed.

She takes her son, swaddled tightly, praying to her gods that he will keep, and that her husband’s dying words will prove true. They travel north, her telltale red tresses concealed by a hood, her glances guarded. Lysa isn’t sure what will happen, if they will come for her, drag her back, or if she will make it home. When she finally sees the faint outlines of her old home, stretching into the clouds, she allows herself to breathe.

Her Sweetrobin is asleep at her breast, the rising and falling of his sunken chest barely visible through the layers of furs. She brushes her lips to his forehead, taking care not to wake him and does not relax her grip on him until they are safely inside his bedchamber. He does stir a bit, but she is able to lull him back to a thin sleep, and when he has been secured, a feeble fire lit by a faceless maid, she walks the lofty corridors, alone, to her chambers.

When she has barred the door, and allowed her cloaks, her masks, to fall to the floor, she draws the bedcurtains and sits in the center, her knees drawn up to her chest, hugging herself.

She’d promised Petyr that she wouldn’t break. And she hasn’t, not really, but she’s just about to. At least no one will see. At least he won’t know. If they ever meet again, her secret will be safe.

Lysa finally weeps, not for her dead husband, not for her squandered hopes, but from relief. She is tired of the false front – pretending to love an old man, denying her son’s thin health, hoping against hope for the rekindling of a dead love, deceiving and conniving as best she can, and knowing that nothing good will come of it.


End file.
